Netflix’s Wayward, created by and starring Mae Martin, arrives as one of the most intriguing new series of the year, a surreal and unsettling blend of mystery, dark humor, and coming-of-age unease. It constantly shifts beneath your feet, drawing from cult dramas, psychological thrillers, and nostalgic teen adventures while telling a story uniquely its own. From the first episode, Wayward establishes itself as a visual and sonic experience.
Read MoreThe Paper: Season 1 (2025)
When Greg Daniels announced a new mockumentary set in the same universe as The Office, expectations soared. Now that The Paper has landed on Peacock, fans finally get to see what the documentary crew behind Dunder Mifflin is up to, this time following a historic Midwestern newspaper, The Toledo Truth-Teller, and its attempt at revival. The result is a mix of familiar laughs, uneven storytelling, and a show that is easy to put on in the background but struggles to find its own identity.
Read More7eventh 7irkle (2025)
Ty Brueilly’s 7eventh 7irkle is not just a short film—it’s an unsettling journey into the subconscious, a fever dream that dares its audience to wrestle with fear, faith, and the fragile boundaries between salvation and damnation. As the eleventh entry in Brueilly’s ever-evolving Shucks Cinematic World, this 16-minute experimental horror short pushes further into the symbolic and surreal, immersing viewers in a kaleidoscope of images drawn from Dante’s Divine Comedy while layering in the filmmaker’s signature raw intensity. From its opening imagery of serpents, owls, and horses to its haunting circus and masked gatherings, the film brims with allegory.
Read MoreThe Threesome (2025)
Romantic comedies often thrive on awkward beginnings, but Chad Hartigan’s The Threesome pushes that discomfort into uncharted territory. What starts as a spontaneous hookup between longtime crushes Olivia and Connor, joined by Jenny during a night out, spirals into something far more complicated: both women wind up pregnant. The result is a messy, funny, and unexpectedly heartbreaking film that embraces the chaos of adulthood without ever reaching for easy answers.
Read MoreTwinless (2025)
James Sweeney’s Twinless is a harrowing yet funny exploration of grief, connection, and the fragile ways people seek meaning after loss. The film opens with a melancholy, Garden State-like atmosphere where conversations unfold with such natural ease that they feel lived-in, not performed. Clever framing tricks, mirrors, shifts in lighting, and sly compositions give the film a cool, offbeat texture that matches its tonal tightrope between comedy and despair.
Read MoreThe Toxic Avenger (2023)
Macon Blair’s The Toxic Avenger is both a tribute to Troma’s midnight-movie legacy and a bizarre reinvention that feels like it escaped from the wrong decade. Somehow, it manages to feel like Troma and not like Troma at the same time. It is gruesome, brutal, cheap-looking in an oddly expensive way, and packed with over-the-top performances.
Read MorePig Hill (2025) #FF25
Kevin Lewis has built a reputation for fearless genre filmmaking, and his latest, Pig Hill, arrives at FrightFest 2025 with plenty of anticipation. After the cult success of Willy’s Wonderland, Lewis trades in tongue-in-cheek animatronic mayhem for something much darker: an adaptation of Nancy Williams’s novel rooted in Meadville, Pennsylvania’s unsettling urban legend of the “pig people.” The setup is promising.
Read MoreStrange Harvest (2024)
Stuart Ortiz, best known for co-directing Grave Encounters, returns with a daring experiment in horror storytelling: a faux true-crime documentary that blurs the line between reality and nightmare. Strange Harvest unfolds with such meticulous authenticity that, if stumbled upon mid-broadcast, it could easily pass for a legitimate investigative docuseries about a serial killer. The story follows Detectives Joe Kirby and Lexi Taylor as they unravel the return of “Mr. Shiny,” a sadistic killer whose ritualistic murders are tied not just to occult symbolism but to forces of a distinctly cosmic persuasion.
Read MoreEden (2024)
Ron Howard’s Eden is a survival thriller that blends prestige with pulp, historical truth with cinematic spectacle. Produced by Brian Grazer, Howard, Karen Lunder, Stuart Ford, William M. Connor, and Patrick Newall, the film assembles an impressive cast—Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Brühl, and Sydney Sweeney—for a story drawn from the real-life settlers of Floreana Island in the Galápagos during the 1930s. On paper, the premise is irresistible: a band of idealists flee modern civilization for paradise, only to discover that the most dangerous predators are themselves.
Read MoreTrust (2025)
In Trust, a taut psychological thriller directed by Carlson Young, Sophie Turner trades dragons and mutants for something far grittier—a panic room, a hacked iCloud, and a pregnancy that raises more questions than stakes. Set in the rural outskirts of Redlands, California, the film aims for visceral tension and trauma survival but lands somewhere between earnest ambition and overwrought genre mashup. Turner plays Lauren, a Hollywood starlet in hiding after a scandal leaves her life—and her trust—shattered.
Read MoreBrute 1976 (2025)
Director Marcel Walz’s latest film, Brute 1976, is a blood-soaked, bell-bottomed descent into grindhouse homage. Co-written with Joe Knetter and released by Cinephobia Releasing, the film aims to channel the chaotic spirit of ‘70s horror staples like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. It mostly succeeds—but not without hitting a few potholes on the desert road to cult glory.
Read MoreHell House LLC: Lineage (2025)
The Hell House LLC franchise has built its reputation on atmospheric scares, lore-heavy storytelling, and an uncanny ability to make simple images like a clown standing still in a dark hallway feel utterly terrifying. With Lineage, the fifth and supposedly final installment, writer-director Stephen Cognetti takes a new approach by moving away from found footage and into a more traditional narrative style. The result is a film that is both ambitious and frustrating, offering moments of genuine tension alongside stretches weighed down by exposition.
Read More